41"Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:

42"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

XV

43"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

44Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold

45Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Notes

1] First published in volume I of Men and Women, 1855, but almost certainly written earlier (between 1847 and 1853). Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) was a famous Venetian composer, at one time organist at St. Mark's, now best known for his light operas. A toccata is a composition for the keyboard originally intended to exercise the touch, as its name suggests. It comes to serve as an exhibition of the player's technical virtuosity. Back to Line

6] In an annual ceremony on Ascension Day, the Doge (from dux) or chief magistrate of Venice "wed" the city to the sea by dropping a ring into the Adriatic, to symbolize the city's close union with the sea and power over it. Venice was for long the greatest maritime power in Europe. Back to Line

8] Shylock's bridge: the famous Rialto bridge over the Grand Canal, the speaker as a modern Englishman "never out of England," naturally thinks of Venice in terms of The Merchant of Venice. Back to Line

19] lesser thirds, sixths diminished, sevenths, suspensions, solutions: the chords Galuppi is using in the toccata. Back to Line

24] The seventh chord on the dominant or fifth, one of the "suspensions," demands the resolution of the "octave" or tonic chord. Back to Line